Following Politicians- Verification Determination!

So Twitter is a great tool to know what is going on in just about any field of interest that you may have. But a particular sphere of culture and society that requires some delicate care in the nature of communications, is politics. We can only imagine how many Bill Clintons and Sara Palins there are out there in Twitter world, and fortunately the powers of the enterprise have managed to implicate a filtering process to protect those that are often victims of impersonation. The blue verification check mark has been applied if a Twitter executive has been in direct communication with the owner of the account and has been given sufficient proof (Ie: a link to their Twitter account via official website, etc) to brand the account as Verified.

This verification process is still being tested and can only be done by request through Twitter's feedback form. A request for business verification is certainly no promise, as Twitter has specified that businesses are not included in the Verification trials that are currently under way.

As you can imagine, politicians are actively using Twitter during campaigning. Barack Obama's page is my current fave, check it out here: http://twitter.com/BarackObama, and yes... it is verified!

How can Twitter Benefit your PR company?

Before getting into how to actually market a company and get a brand message delivered via Twitter, I would like to address some of the ways a PR company can use Twitter to help assess how their clients are being received in Twitter nation ( this would be useful for PR corporations that deal with more prominent brands).

Microsoft's very own PR agency, Waggener Edstrom, created a Twitter application that not only tracks when and how often a brand is tweet referenced, but the general feeling that is being elicited from those commentaries.

The tool is called Twendz and it provides you with a generalized summary of how product, idea or event is being received over time. It is free to use online at http://twendz.waggeneredstrom.com/

I suggest to simply give it a try. Submit the name of a current movie, technology, book, etc and you will see a thread of real time commentaries that are being filtered through the system based on your submission.

Supporting or rallying a cause via Twitter

Twitter is a great tool to get a message across. If you are pushing for a cause, it's a great tool to keep your followers up to date on what is going on. @officialpeta (Peta's Twitter site) is a great example. Check their page out to know who's in the bad- who's in the good- and where you can get all the good stuff free of animal testing and bi-products.

Deliver it in real time! ::Journalism/Live-reporting::

Did anyone hear about Kanye West stealing the spotlight from little Taylor Swift last night during her acceptance speech for a VMA? Well that circulated across the internet within seconds after the incident, and guess where the news first broke online? Twitter! In 140 or less characters you can get a quick message across to your followers. 

Famous celebrity and lifestyle blogger, Perez Hilton, was at a magic show in April this year, which was being presented by Chris Angel. While he's sitting in the audience, he happened to be tweeting on his mobile phone about how unentertaining he thought the show was. Well the news happened to get to Angel within his hour and a half show block and he ended his presentation with this statement: "I have to recognize someone special here in the house," said Angel, according to a witness. "Perez Hilton, please stand up.... We have the world's biggest douchebag ###hole in the house!"

Yikess!!! Vibrant example, but this is how many reporters and journalists are using Twitter.

CNN is on my Twitter contact list and the very moment a new story drops, guess where you can find it?! 4 hours ago, a tweet is published: [HAPPENING NOW: President Obama speaking on financial regulatory reform. Watch on CNN TV and CNN.com/live.]
Even though your Tweets are restricted to 140 characters, that doesn't mean the message you want to release is bounded in anyway. (Just add a link to your full story) Quick and effective.

Feedback is always appreciated! How do you use Twitter at work and do you use it for live-reporting/journalism?

-H

Are People Talking About You? (You better know when it happens!) Step 2 to Twitter success: M O N I T O R

I had great sushi today from a little sushi hut that I normally wouldn't go into. When I saw a special for a cream cheese yam and avacodo roll, I just couldn't resist! Although I am not the kind of tweeter that tweets every giggle and burp... sometimes it's just great to share an experience, whether it be good or bad. So, tweeting "Had the most delicious yam and cream cheese roll at Sushi Sushi on W. Broadway!" is perfect and a valuable piece of information for lots out there in cyber world to digest.

If Sushi Sushi were to monitor their activity and influence on Twitter, then they would surely be pleased upon stumbling accross my tweet. Next question: How could they effectively monitor this kind of activity?
There are a lot of different sites and modules out there for people to do real time activity reports, but one of the best I have seen is TweetDeck.

This is a program you will have to download, but I highly recommend it. It's very user friendly and a lot easier to use than the original Twitter platform. Compiled pretty much all on one page, you will be able to get around very quickly, and best yet: without even changing pages, you can; view tweet resumes from your contacts, observe who is mentioning you, have access to your inbox, pass a few tweets yourself and search the whole Twitter directory. For businesses, you will want this! The moment someone references your company name or perhaps one of your products, you will have an immediate notification.

I would love to hear a success story! Let us know :)

H

Step 1 to Twitter success: Keep T R A C K!

Twitter has been becoming a prominent marketing,PR, and customer service tool  for many companies in the past year. But how can you determine if Twitter is truly a cost and time effective communications medium for your company and if it, is in fact, generating an ROI (Return on Investment)?

There are several online gizmos that can help determine if your Twitter account is a driving success or a bombing failure. A simple start for beginners is a program called Twitter Counter (http://www.twittercounter.com/) Submit your handle and you will have immediate access to growth predictions, activity charts and statistics. If you have a lot of followers but very few visits to your page, then it's a indication that it's time to spice things up a bit!

Twitalyzer (http://www.twitalyzer.com/) is another common Twitter tracking apparatus that assesses 5 different key components considered elemental to tweeting success. A user simply submits their user handle to the statistic generator, and will then be given statistics relating to their: A) influence B) signal C) generosity D) velocity and E) clout. These results are determined by the number of followers, how often a 'tweet' or handle is referenced by others, how often they reply to tweets, as well as how often your tweets are replayed on other Twitter profiles.

This is just a starting point for beginners. More extensive analytical strategies can be taken, such as hiring a social media analysist or upgrading software. Upon completition of the 8 steps to Twitter success, other programs that offer more detailed assessments of the effectiveness of Twitter will be brought to light.

Twitter Twatter

As Twitter becomes more interspersed into the deliverance, mainteance and growth of a company's message and branding, the use of email marketing is playing a less of a role as it has traditionally. However, using Twitter in your media relations strategies, does not gauruntee success and an ROI, as 'tweeting' must be done tactfully and in the interest of a specific targetted audience. So how do we make it work?!
Matt Rhodes, from the Marketing & Strategy innovation Blog, recently posted a blog on some research conducted by Corinne Weisgerber an assistant professor of Communications at St. Edwards University in Austin Texas, on the different ways a company can use Twitter in their PR strategies:
This list is as follows:

1. Tracking
2. Monitoring
3. Live-reporting
4. Journalism
5. Activism
6. Public Relations
7. Political Communications

Over the next few blogs, I will focus one blog on each of these 8 steps to Twitter success!

Looking forward to your feedback- Please feel free to share any success stories that your company has had with Twitter!

-H